Participants were required to send 0.005 BTC each to an unknown address

Another Twitter Account Hacked

The decentralized cryptocurrency, Vertcoin, found its Twitter account hacked on May 1st, when a tweet promising a 10 BTC giveaway to celebrate the cryptocurrency’s success was posted by fraudsters. The hackers required its followers to send 0.005 BTC to an unknown address, while promising that the winner would get 10 BTC in return on May 5th.

Hey, everyone! Vertcoin and staff are pleased to announce that we’re doing a 10 BTC giveaway to our followers to celebrate Vertcoin’s success. Send 0.005 to 3HU5sj7kB6wT9zRwpbhCRrR28vKWjfkMKf enter! Winner will be announced 5/3/18 at 8pm EST.

Shortly after the tweet, the Vertcoin’s lead developer, James Lovejoy declared the Vertcoin twitter account had been hacked, warning followers off accepting any giveaways. In 12 hours, Vertcoin’ twitter account was back under control, as indicated by Lovejoy’s subsequent tweet:

Thank you @TwitterSupport, the @Vertcoin twitter account is now back under our control. Let this be a lesson in strong 2FA that cannot be easily bypassed (avoid SMS). I apologise to anyone that sent BTC to the 'giveaway' address. As I stated earlier yesterday, that was not real.

Elon Musk

Looking further back, in February we saw fraudsters hack into Elon Musk’s twitter feed promising a 5000 ETH giveaway to commemorate a launch event. Participants were required to send 0.3 – 2 Ether to an address to get 10 times the Ether they had sent in return.

Charlie Lee

In January, following Charlie Lee’s LTC donations in December, we saw multiple fake Charlie Lee accounts promising free LTC giveaways. Imposters used similar Twitter account names such as @SatoshiLitez and @SatoshiLitee_ to announce giveaways ranging from 50 to 500 LTC.